Steering Wheel Control Bluetooth

04-08-2013, 07:05 AM

Hello All,

After having 3 PC's in my car over a 2 year period. I became tired of the typical CarPC issues and wanted an instant on OS. When the Galaxy Tab2 dropped in price I made my decision and grabbed one. I first tried playing with OTG (USB Host) it worked well, however you can not reliably charge and use OTG on the TAB at the same time. So I searched and searched for a Bluetooth solution. I did not find very much! So I decided to create my own. I first explored the idea of starting with a Bluetooth Keyboard and adapt the electronics to my needs, with no luck there I set out to build my own.

The hardware requirements:
- Resistive input for steering wheel connection.
- Possible VAG, CAM bus (future)
- Bluetooth Radio to act as keyboard.
- Easy Soft setup for mode select, car select, feature select, button assignment.
- Allow for simultaneous Factory radio and Bluetooth device to be connected.(Future)
**04/14/13 attempted connection with a Honda radio still inline and the resistance changes were too much for the Honda radio to understand commands anymore.
**04/28/13 Initial release will require a DPDT switch to enable use of factory radio with this device.

After a lot of research, waiting for shipments to arrive and endless hours of coding/debugging I now have two working prototypes. I still have a lot to do to allow for soft setup, button assignments, adding more commands etc. etc. I figure if I had so much trouble finding a solution then there must be others as well, I am calling for beta testers.

If you have:
- vehicle with steering wheel controls
- or any wired or custom remote that uses Resistive buttons.
- and have the desire to control something other than the factory radio with those buttons via Bluetooth. (Phone, Tablet, PC anything that supports Bluetooth Keyboard)

I have been hard at work trying to get the code finished so that I can get some units out there for testing.

Currently everything is working as expected but the setup is preset based and I only have three presets so far. Test Buttons, Subaru and Honda.
I am working on a learn routine, once that is working setup will allow to press a steering wheel control and save it as a button no presets needed.
I will have a limited number of units for initial testing.

*** Update *** 04/28/2013

I finally had time to sit down this weekend and debug the rest of the code. Everything is working!
I even found a better/cheaper source for hardware so that will help too.
I will be assembling and testing a few units over the next week and then I will officially be ready for BetaTesters.

As far as I can tell most cars have the same button Names/Functions if you have buttons not listed below please post below your list of buttons.

Volume+, Volume-, Mute(Play/Pause), Next and Previous.

***Update 05/05/2013***

I have three units built tested and ready to go they will be up on eBay later today.

Comment

I'm interested, I have a nexus 7 in the dash of a Mercedes R500 and play everything through the factory Harmon kardon system. finding the wires to the headunit are no problem. my steering wheel buttons control the radio and the instrument cluster, being able to switch to media control and then back to vehicle control would be really cool. does the factory bus mind intermittent breaks as it's switched? wouldn't simultaneous affect the resistance?

I thought to embed a Bluetooth keyboard in the steering wheel and make additional separate buttons but what you're talking about sounds cool.

Comment

turbocad6 I will need to look into the Mercedes. If the buttons are truly resistive then you should not have to worry about the bus.
If you are going to be adding buttons you can wire them through resistors and use them with my device as well.